“Like a machine?”
“Correct. And membrane oxygenation is where the machine adds oxygen into the blood and removes carbon dioxide, just like your lungs do.”
“So it’s essentially an artificial lung?”
“Yeah, you can call it that. The ECMO machine pumps and oxygenates the patient’s blood outside his body so his heart and lungs can rest. The blood flows through a tubing to an artificial lung in the machine, then the blood is warmed to body temperature and pumped back into the patient’s body and circulated around, like your heart would do. It’s mainly used on patients whose heart and lungs are so severely diseased and damaged they can no longer function on their own.”
“I see. So you use it on patients who are awaiting lung transplants?”
“Yes. And for patients who are recovering from heart failure, or lung failure, or heart surgery. It doesn’t heal their heart and lungs per se, but it gives them time to rest and recover.”
“Sounds to me like you’re in the thick of the action, snatching patients back from the brink of death and saving lives with the ECMO machine. You’re an unsung hero, Lucy Lawless. Not all heroes wear capes. Sometimes they wear denim on denim like Jay Leno and don’t have time for your nonsense.”
I expected her to laugh but instead her expression turned somber. And there was a sadness in her face I didn’t understand. “When those organs stop working, the ECMO machine does their job for days, weeks, even months. It puts a pause button on death.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?”
“Sometimes I’m not sure if it is.” Her face was drawn tight, and she was staring out the window. “For some patients, it can make death worse for them.”
“How?”
“It draws it out. Makes it harder for them to die.” She gave a harsh laugh. “I know this probably sounds strange to you, but when a patient’s life is saved using ECMO, it’s not always what you think.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s no so black and white. The patients, they don’t just live or die. There’s this middle ground, this gray area where they neither live nor die.” She sighed. “Sorry I’m probably not making much sense right now.” She drew a deep breath and tried again. “When my patients are saved by ECMO, they don’t die, but they don’t necessarily get better either. So yes, I might be saving lives, but I worry it’s a quality of life they don’t want. They’re just... there, lying in limbo. In LTACH.”
I waited for her to explain and in time, she did.
“Long-term acute care hospital. It’s meant to be a stopover on their road to recovery. The goal is for them to go home. But in reality, most of my patients who end up in LTACH don’t go home. Presently, only two of them are at home and living independently after nine months. Most of them died after six months.” She inhaled sharply. Exhaled. “Sorry to burden you with all that. I’ve had a rough week at work.”
“Wanna talk about it?” I asked. “I’m good with emotional heavy lifting.”
“How come?”
“That’s a story for another day.” After a brief pause, I said, “Are you doing okay?”
“Yeah.” I noted the forced smile on her lips. “I talk to Gouda all the time.”
“Gouda?” I drew a blank before it dawned on me. “Oh, yeah, your horse.”
“He helps me get through my days. Being around him is seriously the best therapy.”
“Well,” I said, “if you want to talk to a human, I’m right here if you need me.”
She said nothing for a while, then, “I was working the graveyard shift the other day and doing my usual rounds in the ICU when one of my patients complained of chest pains. In the background, I heard the heart rate monitor, the regular staccato beeping, and then all of a sudden her heart rate began to drop and within seconds it just flatlined.”
“No shit,” I cursed under my breath.
“So I immediately called for code blue and then a whole team swarmed in. Everything after that happened so quickly. It was chaos. The compressions started, the bed dropped, the crash cart arrived, the backboard was shoved into place, the monitors attached. Everyone scrambled to their places and I rotated in for compressions, pushing hard against the woman’s chest.” She drew in a deep, controlled breath. “Her frail body jerked up and down, like a rag doll being pummeled to the bed. And then I heard this clicking noise.”
I snuck a glance at Lucy. She was a picture of despair.
“The clicking noise was the sound of her ribs breaking.” She began pleating the fabric of her jeans between her fingers. “I could actually feel her bones cracking underneath my hands. Still, I threw my weight on her chest, doing my best to focus on pushing to the metronome in my head. I remember how her chest felt like a piece of floppy cardboard. I remember the adrenaline, the dryness in my mouth, the sheer exhaustion. I remember rotating in and out, trying to push for as long as I could to give the other nurses in rotation time to recover. Eventually, someone burst into the room and strapped on a LUCAS.”
She exhaled hard before continuing. “LUCAS is this automated chest compression device that works like a jackhammer to the chest. That went on for a while and at some point, Dr. Ghiz made the call for ECMO. That’s when the frantic activity stopped. I stared at the patient lying there, her chest completely covered in bruises.” After a charged pause, she said, “By that time code blue had gone on for two hours.”
Fuckin’ hell. “You’d been trying to resuscitate her for that long?”
A deep sigh broke free from her chest. “Uh-huh, which means her brain hadn’t been getting enough oxygen for two whole hours. As I was hooking her up to the ECMO machine, I felt numb. Confused. I didn’t know if we were doing the right thing. It didn’t feel like treatment to help her. It felt like treatment for the sake of treatment, you know what I’m saying?”
I snuck another glance and she was looking right at me, as if searching for an answer.
My grip tightened around the steering wheel. I weighed my response, choosing my words carefully. “Try thinking of your two patients who are at home right now. They’re not stuck in limbo. They got better. Because of ECMO, because of what you did, they now have a second chance at life.”
She smiled, but the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “The success rate for ECMO is so low it’s basically a medical Hail Mary pass. And I can’t stop thinking of my patients stuck in LTACH. They’ll likely never get that second chance. And they’re suffering.”
Staring straight ahead at an empty stretch of highway, I said, “Ever thought about switching careers? Or even just being a different kind of nurse? A friend of mine is a travel nurse and she seems to like her job.”
“You know that travel nurses are basically murderers, right? They kill old people and take their money and run.”
A shiver ran up my spine. “No shit. Really?”
“No,” she deadpanned.
I laughed and she shoved my arm playfully. “You’re so gullible, Edric. Anyway, I could never be a travel nurse.”
“Why not?”
“I have Gouda.”
“Right.” I nodded. And for the first time, I found myself seeing her with fresh eyes. “Lucy,” I said earnestly. “I regret everything.”
“You do?” she said skeptically.
“I’m sorry I misjudged you. I’m sorry I called you a crazy horse gal. I think I understand now. Every day, you’re around patients in the critical care unit who are hooked up to life support machines, and Gouda, he’s your life support machine. He keeps you going.”
“You know what?” She smiled a tentative sort of smile when our gazes met. “No one has ever put it that way, but he does. He keeps me sane. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without him.”
For the next hour, I continued driving around and our conversations just seemed to flow naturally. Even the silent moments were welcomed by us both.
We spent time listening to the podcast, discussing the crimes in greater detail, going over the facts, chew
ing on them like a piece of gum that remained flavorful and juicy no matter how long we’d been chewing.
“Okay, so this guy Sam Ford was working two jobs to support his family and his cousin’s family while his cousin, Owen, was incarcerated,” I surmised. “Sam says he was helping out Owen’s wife with her rent money because she was a struggling single mom with another baby on the way. Are you buying it?”
“Hmm.” Lucy twisted her lips. “Everyone seems to think Sam is such a stand-up guy but I’m not buying it. Nope. Not buying it at all. Owen went to prison and Sam didn’t because his cousin didn’t narc on him. They were both in on it.”
“Agreed,” I said. “Sam needs to answer for his crimes.”
“I watch Law & Order: SVU.” Lucy huffed. “I know better. There’s no way Sam was helping Owen’s family out of the goodness of his heart.”
“Absolutely no way. It was a means to shut him up. He didn’t want Owen to sing like a canary.”
“Yep,” she agreed. “And you know damn well Owen could’ve got his sentence reduced if he did, in fact, sing. So Sam helping with the rent—that was probably just hush money. And I bet he boned Owen’s wife and that kid is really his.”
“Clearly, he boned her,” I said. “Obviously he’s the father of that child.”
“Obviously. And to support two families, Sam continued dealing drugs on the side.”
“And when the deal went south—”
“He killed Jason.”
“Hmm.” I set my mouth in a grim line. “I think we’re on to something here.”
“I believe so.” Her brows were furrowed low. “Sam Ford did it.”
“He’s guilty,” I concluded. “I know he is.”
The podcast hosts soon confirmed our theory. Sam Ford was in fact the murderer.
“Hah!” Lucy raised a hand and I slapped her a high five. “We called it!”
“Sure did,” she said smugly. “Somebody give me a detective badge! NYPD SVU, baby!”
After a beat, I proposed another theory, “Do you think watching and listening to true crime is making us overly cynical and jaded about the world and everything in it?”
We exchanged a look. A long and considering look. Then we shook our heads and exclaimed simultaneously, “Nah!”
Chapter Four
Lucy
“THANKS FOR FEEDING me,” I said while slurping up my milkshake.
Edric looked affronted. “You can’t expect me to take you out on a date and just drive around for hours on end and not feed you. What do you think I am? A monster?”
I chuckled. “Well, thank you. In-N-Out Burger was delicious. I get it now. It’s been hyped to the hills and now I get what all the hype is about.”
“What?” he said with some surprise. “They don’t have In-N-Out in Wisconsin?”
“They don’t,” I said forlornly.
We passed a large alfalfa field and before long, we neared the turnoff for the road that would take us back to the stables. The lights caught the reflectors on the road as Edric veered left and rolled to a stop at a red light.
Moments later, he flicked on his turn signal and pulled into the deserted parking lot. “Just park by my truck over there,” I instructed.
As his car swerved to a stop, the edge of the headlight beams lit the stalls situated on the north side. “Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to wake up your horse.”
“You didn’t. Most horses only sleep around two to four hours a day. Gouda does most of his sleeping in the early mornings. Back when we lived on my farm in Wisconsin, I’d hear him goofing around at night. When it was a full moon or a snow-lit night, I’d see him playing with the other mares, rolling and galloping in the field with his friends.”
Edric threw his car into park. “I bet he misses that.”
“He does.” I smiled at him. “He misses being outside twenty-four seven. Rain, hail, or shine. But not for long, right?”
There was a hint of laughter in his eyes and a sexy grin tilted his lips. “Right, right. You didn’t go on this date with me out of the goodness of your heart. This is merely a business exchange, correct?”
“You’re not wrong. You get a pretend girlfriend.” I jabbed a thumb to my chest. “Me. And I get to use your horse property.”
He cut the engine. “I’m well aware of our agreement.”
“Good.”
“Grand.” I kept the smile fixed on my face as he unclicked his seatbelt. “Wait. What are you doing?”
“Walking you to your truck.”
“Why?” I said in a panic. “I’m fine. You don’t have to,” I steadfastly refused, but he was already getting out of his car. Exhaling a clipped sigh, I got out, too. “Just so you know, this is completely pointless.”
“Hey, lots of violent crimes occur in deserted parking lots. I won’t allow you to be murdered. Not on my watch.”
“Well, this is me. My truck. Right here.” The alarm chirped as I pushed the button on my key fob. “See?” I grumbled. “Took us less than five paces to get here.” Grabbing the handle, I gave it a yank and swung the door open.
When I spun around, Edric stood shocked and immobilized. It took me a second to realize I’d opened the rear door on accident.
“Why is there a sleeping bag rolled out on your back seat?” He peered over my shoulder. “And pillows and blankets, clothes strewn all over, and a laundry basket. Wait.” He stared at me. “You live out of your truck?”
I floundered for an excuse but quickly gave up. “Fine!” I snapped. “Yes, I sleep in my truck. So?”
“Lucy.” His concern showed in his voice. “You didn’t tell me you were a... a squatter.”
“Squatter?” I balked. “I am not a homeless person, okay? This is merely a temporary situation until I can find myself a new apartment.”
“Were you evicted?”
“No.” My voice went squeaky high. “I was living with my ex. We broke up last month.” That was all I told him. He didn’t need to know the real reason.
“Pack a bag,” he ordered. “You’re coming home with me.”
“What?” I said in a strained voice. “No.”
“Lucy, you’re my girl, all right? And no girl of mine sleeps in a truck.”
“So these girls you date, where do they typically sleep? Let me guess,” I deadpanned. “In your bed.”
“Actually, yes. They do. I have a reputation to keep. And if you don’t come home with me tonight, my friends are gonna think something’s up.”
Well... when he puts it like that. Plus, I can scope out his pad and see for myself if he does indeed have horse property.
“All right.” I relented and began stuffing my clothes into a duffel bag. “Why the heckerdoodle not? Give me a few minutes to pack my things.” I tossed some essentials into a toiletry bag and zipped it up. “A bargain’s a bargain.”
“Yep.” His jaw tensed. “You keep your end of the bargain and I’ll keep mine. Deal?”
“Deal.”
Chapter Five
Lucy
“HORSE PROPERTY—CHECK!”
Edric turned at my exclamation. “So I’m checking off a lot of your boxes right now, huh?”
“You are.” He was checking every box I had and some I hadn’t even known I had.
He watched me with mild amusement. “What am I? A loan application?”
“Hah! If you were, I doubt I’d ever qualify for a mortgage to buy this place.”
Holy fucknuts! This mega-mansion sat on a lot the size of a cornfield. Much to my dismay, I didn’t get to snoop around his sprawling estate. Edric walked me through the back door, cutting across the industrial-sized kitchen, ushering me down a long, long, long hallway.
“Is this hallway a mile long?” I asked. “I can’t decide if this is a hallway, or a corridor, or an aisle, or possibly an alley.”
“My bedroom is at the end of the passageway,” he said quietly.
Okay, a passageway it is. “Why are you whispering?” I said softly. “A
nd why can’t I go swanning around your lofty mansion?”
“Because I said so.”
“Why can’t I, Daddy?” I made my voice teeter toward a whine. “Why? Whyyyyy?”
“Why do you want to swan around?”
“Well, one does not simply walk around a castle. One swans,” I intoned.
“I’ll show you around tomorrow,” he said, nudging me along the endless passageway. “You’ll get the full tour.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.” We rounded a corner and he led me down another passageway. “I don’t think they can hear us now.”
“Who?”
“Adelaide and Miguel,” he said. “They’re watching a movie upstairs and I really don’t feel like being badgered with a gazillion questions right now. I’d rather just deal with them in the morning.”
“Aww,” I cooed. “Do your friends always wait up for you at night?”
“Yeah.” He wore a sheepish grin. “Sometimes they do.”
“How sweet,” I said in a saccharine voice.
“More like nosy.” He slowed to a halt as we reached the end of the hallway and he paused with his hand on the doorknob. “Welcome to my humble abode.”
“Pssh!” I waved his words aside. “I’m sure it’s anything but humble.”
He held the door open to let me pass. “After you.” He held my gaze intently, as if undressing me with his eyes. Or I liked to think he was.
I wet my throat, feeling the strong electric pull between us. It was undeniable.
“Why, thank you!” I brushed past him and our shoulders grazed. At once, heat prickled along my skin and my nipples puckered, straining against the crisp material of my shirt.
I was certain he noticed.
“Wow!” I exclaimed, twirling around. I took it all in, scanning the expansive suite, craning my neck to look up at the domed ceiling. “What a robust rotunda you have here.”
“All right.” He laughed. “You can cut that out now, Mrs. Wordsmith. This is just my bedroom. It’s where I get a lot of my work done.”
The Good Mistake (Hemsworth Brothers #3) Page 6
